Rants & ramblings of the disaffected

Archive for the category “parenting”

Our kids are having to undo twenty years of bad-parenting so we decided to get a dog to see if our parenting skills had improved. When pets misbehave, you can legitimately threaten them with being spayed or neutered however I have been told by numerous bystanders and intrusive officials that this is not a valid threat you are allowed to use…with children. We are then prompted to employ those tried and true methods of pacification that pass for parenting today.

Like the educational system, the goal of parenting has been redefined to accommodate lowered expectations. No longer should you attempt to correct misbehavior but instead resort to tactics to placate, mitigate or defer the actual causes of bad behavior.

Rather than raise your children to cohabit without violence, we have now collectively decided to pass their behavioral problems on to their future spouses or law enforcement, as the case may be. This is why I often advise parents to move to another state with no forwarding address when their kids leave home. Otherwise they will move back in, thirty days later when they discover to their surprise their landlords will not gladly advance them large sums of cash to pay their own rent; then summarily forgive them of their debts when they can’t.

Parenting skills today rely on tactics to pacify, pamper, defer, bribe, or otherwise manipulate children. With any luck, society will surround the next generation with unrealistic expectations and produce large numbers of dysfunctional misfits in the process.

My belief is that having your kids spayed or neutered may be preferrable to having to raise your kid’s kids. This is of course to be done while their parents are left free to pursue the mythological beast of personal happiness or other gratuitous forms of narcissist self-expression.

Dysfunctional behavior is now an institution. Responsible mass media will inundate their viewers with the latest antics of Celebrity Rehab with positive role models like Paris Hilton, Lindsey Lohan, and Madonna, who still can’t tell the difference between a brazier and traffic pylons. And what A-list offenders would be complete without Charlie Sheen?

What boy wouldn’t want to live like Charlie Sheen? Not only do you get your own sit-com but your detrimental behavior is rewarded with commercials that glamorize your misconduct; plus you get to actually drive your sports car recklessly inside your mansion while hosts of adoring pretty girls applaud you for being a rebel. What’s not realistic about that?

Bad parenting skills take time to acquire so don’t be discouraged if your kids are generally polite or industrious and interact well with others.